Communications networks are found in most urban environments nowadays and form an important part of every day life in the western world. One of the most commonly used communications networks is the Internet. The Internet is available through various different network resources such as a wired Internet connection, which may take the form of an Ethernet based local area network (LAN), a wireless local area network (WLAN), and through a cellular network via mobile devices such as mobile phones. In this context, network resources are connectivity options that a mobile device may have when searching for an Internet connection. Given that todays' mobile devices are equipped with multiple wireless interfaces (e.g. WLAN, Bluetooth, GPRS, UMTS, etc.), there are many options. An alternative term for these network resources, when used in a mobile/wireless context, are RATs or Radio Access Technologies. In addition to the Internet, internal communications within a company or a home may be provided via an intranet, which may use wired Ethernet or WLAN-based systems. These include, but are not limited to, IEEE 802.11a/b/g/n (WiFi variants), Zigbee, Bluetooth or any other present and future wireless local area networking standards. Other common communications networks include the PSTN wired telephone network, which is slowly becoming less popular in the western world, in addition to cellular based communications networks, which, in contrast, are continually growing in popularity across the globe.
LANs are communications networks which cover small geographic areas, and provide allow for both internal communications between users of the LAN in addition to providing a connection to external networks such as the Internet. Such networks are integral to large scale networking communications because they reduce the overall traffic flow over wide area networks (WANs) when only short range communications are being made.
Generally, LANs and WLANs are provided in buildings such as offices and homes, however, increasingly such networks are being found in other public spaces, being provided in both inside and outside environments. In particular, WLANs are becoming more commonly used in outside public spaces to allow for users of the Internet to roam using a WLAN connection.
Wireless communication has many advantages over the traditional wired based communications in that it allows for users to access network resources away from wired connection points, as well as allowing users to move around while communicating through the network resource. In addition to this, laptop computers, mobile phones, and other wireless communications devices with WLAN connectivity capabilities are becoming ever more popular. This is partly due to the improved level of service provided by these devices, but also due to recent reductions in prices.
The increase in the popularity of electronic devices utilising wireless network resources such as WLAN connectivity is placing increasing demands on the bandwidth requirements and performance capabilities of WLANs. It is therefore common for users of WLANs, whether it be in the home, office, or any other environment, to experience reductions in communication speed, and possibly even communication failure when a particular WLAN is in high demand. Such reductions in speed and possible failures in the network connection are extremely undesirable. This is particularly pertinent for users of real-time communications such as multimedia streaming, IPTV or video communications.
The usual approach taken within IP-based communications is that of ‘best effort’ traffic delivery, which treats each data packet as equal in priority and attempts to serve all streams equally. In recent years, a number of methods have been employed that offer a degree of Quality of Service (QoS), usually by assigning different priority levels to data packets based on their class of application. This involves attempting to provide slower services for non-real-time data streams, to ensure that those needing real-time data streams are less disturbed by the lack of available bandwidth. However, such methods are still limited by the available bandwidth and consequently the above-mentioned problem is only reduced slightly. Although improvements can be seen in situations where real-time (RT) and non-real-time (NRT) traffic is mixed, a LAN trying to service a number of RT streams will struggle when the available bandwidth is not adequate for all of them. Setting each stream to the same (high) priority will still result in dropouts and loss of service.